Adobe walls no match for leaking water pipe

Published 7:00 pm, Thursday, August 20, 2009

An insidious water leak deep inside its adobe walls did what 60 years of Mother Nature's huffing and puffing couldn't do.

It literally brought down the Charles C. Pierce Apartments at 408 W. Seventh.

Built in 1936-37, the complex included five one-bedroom and five efficiency apartments. It was used by Wayland Baptist University as married student housing when the terminal damage was discovered, and the structure was subsequently demolished in late 1992.

Raymon Patrick, then 84, watched as the structure was torn down on Nov. 6, 1992, with mixed emotions, according to an article by staff writer Phillip Hamilton (now Olton Enterprise publisher). That's because Patrick, then a 25-year-old carpenter, was part of the six-member crew that built the structure. He did all the framing work.

"I'm the only guy alive who worked on that building," Patrick quipped in 1992.

According to local cemetery records, Patrick joined the ranks of his coworkers five years later, in 1997.

Built as an investment property for local storekeeper Mrs. C.A. Pierce, the two-story complex was surrounded on the north and east by houses. The Nazarene church was across the street to the southwest.

"Ben Wren was the mudmaker," Patrick recalled. "He made the (adobe) bricks over at Eighth and Amarillo and hauled them over to the site." Those 30-pound bricks were used to make the outside walls, which were then covered with stucco.

"The stucco was put on by Bill Edwards," who mixed it up and put it on by hand, Patrick said.

The first sign of impending doom for the structure occurred almost 60 years later when that same stucco began to crack and crumble. The leaking pipe was finally found in a northwest apartment wall, but by then much of the strong adobe had been reduced to slimy mud.

Under the supervision of general contractor O.R. Stark, construction began in the late summer of 1936 and was completed by late winter 1937. When the complex was ready to occupy, Mrs. Pierce - who was busy running a chain of dry good stores with her husband - asked Patrick to stay on the payroll to help iron out any maintenance issues.

From the very beginning the Pierce Apartments had a close connection with Wayland.

C.A. Pierce served as a Wayland trustee from 1921-36, and he named the apartment complex for the couple's son, Charles C. Pierce, who graduated from Wayland in 1929.

After receiving a two-year degree (since Wayland was a junior college), young Pierce completed his education at the University of Missouri and joined a municipal bond in Dallas. Soon he was handling municipal bonds at Mercantile National Bank in Dallas.

In 1933 federal regulations forced banks to withdraw from the securities business. As a result, Pierce and bank co-worker John H. Rauscher formed their own firm, Rauscher Pierce & Co., with the blessing of Mercantile Bank president Bob Thornton Sr., who arranged for a startup loan.

Eventually, Rauscher Pierce Refsnes, Inc., (now RBC Dain Rauscher Inc.) grew into one of the Southwest's leading banking and brokerage firms. But despite the power and prestige as chairman of the massive organization Pierce continued to be a strong supporter of Wayland. Thus, when Wayland in 1981 found itself in desperate need of housing for married students, Pierce responded by giving the school his namesake complex.

The school took possession of the apartments on Aug. 12, 1981, with Pierce on hand for a formal dedication the following July. He died not long after, on Jan. 19, 1984.

By the early 1990s Wayland's shortage of housing had ebbed, which meant fewer couples were calling the quickly-deteriorating Pierce complex their "home." As a result Wayland officials contacted the Pierce family about its plans to sell the property. By late 1992 all but one of the tenants had moved out.

It was that lone resident who reported the cracking stucco, which led to the discovery of the fatal water leak.

At the time, Wayland's Danny Murphree told the Herald, "When we started looking, we found the water leak. The adobe brick had simply turned to mud."

Since the corner wall had lost its strength, Murphree said, "We feared that it would fail."

Unable to save the structure, Wayland salvaged what interior fixtures it could. Among the items were several beveled glass mirrors, which had originally been installed by Patrick.

"It was a solid building," Murphree said as the walls were being pulled down in 1992. "You hate to see something like that come down. There was a lot of history in that building."